laird

noun

1. 1

   historicalA feudal lord in Scottish contexts.

2. 2

   An aristocrat, particularly in Scottish contexts and in reference to the chiefs of the Scottish clans.

   Now Wiſe, and Rich, and Worthie, and Wonderful, and Faithful and True, and Rare, & Charitable, and Great Laird of Carnwath, Be not Prowd, altho I Commend you at ſuch a Rate behind your back and yet never ſaw You...

   Once I was call'd a great Fife laird, I dwelt not far from the Hall-yard: [...] O! but it's long and many a year, Since laſt my feet did travel here. I find great change in old lairds places, I know the ground, but not the faces, Where ſhall I turn me firſt about, For my acquaintance is worn out?

   [H]e brought with him money enough to purchase the small estate of Monkbarns, then sold by a dissipated laird to whose father it had been gifted, with other church lands, upon the dissolution of the great and wealthy monastery to which it had belonged.

   Though now entered on the stage of glorious war, the young Laird of Dalbracken remained still the same imaginative and sensitive being who dreamed and loved in the scenes of his boyhood.

3. 3

   A landowner, particularly in Scottish contexts.

verb

1. 1

   Chiefly as laird it over: to behave like a laird, particularly to act haughtily or to domineer; to lord (it over).

   But cauld was his hearth ere his youdith was o'er, / An' he delved on the lands he had lairded before; / Yet though he beggared his ha' an' deserted his lea, / Contented he roamed on the banks o' the Dee.

   You'd stand with a single malt, / in braces, admiring a Grinling, / while I did a fingertip search of your face, / [...] / discovering the recesses of baronial you, / lairding it in a rental estate / we were about to lose.

   Declan observed him, analyzing his reaction. He loved to unnerve his lairding brother.

   Classic horror movie The Wicker Man is getting an outside airing at Compton Verney. [...] Set on a remote Scottish island lairded over by the incomparable Christopher Lee, the film strands the viewer – and young policeman Edward Woodward – among a neo-pagan community where blood sacrifice, passion and lust collide in the mist.

Forms

plural

lairds

past tense

lairded

past participle

lairded

present participle

lairding

third person singular

lairds